Developing a blended-learning community in a university setting

Abstract

Today, many universities feel the necessity to move from the scenario of a plurality of enhanced-learning classroom experiences to one where flexible learning and blended learning are relevant and widely diffused paradigms. Such a transition may gain an advantage in an institution-wide blended-learning community where educational knowledge and practices are shared among members. In this paper, we propose a bottom-up approach consisting of four steps (consulting, pioneering, growing and evaluating) that can be cyclically executed in order to build such a community. For each step, we outline the role that the academic institution plays in the constituting community-building initiatives, and we discuss organisational and technological issues to be considered towards a flexible learning scenario. The approach has been adopted in a three-year project that is still ongoing at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Calabria. We describe that study and present some evaluation results dealing with the approach's validity.